“What else can we do?” asked Lindsey Graham, who said he might be forced to ‘come out’ on national TV just to compete with Trump for the attention.

Donald Trump’s 2016 success at grabbing the headlines, followed by Mike Huckabee’s out-trumping “Holocaust” remarks, led to a desperate scramble among GOP presidential candidates to find something — anything — outrageous to say to get attention.

“It’s the pathetic logic of our situation, what else can we do?” whimpered Sen. Lindsey Graham at the time. “We all feel we gotta grab the headlines somehow!”

Graham noted that he had already made some headway with his phone-smashing video, and hinted that as a follow-up he would “come out” on national TV, naming John McCain as his secret lover.

“If that doesn’t get me onto the stage at the 6 August Fox News debate,” Graham said, “nothing will! It might even get Johnny there again too, bless his cute little tush.”

Graham went on: “Actually my announcement would be a two-fer for me and Rick Perry. Because he’s planning to call for gays to be used as guinea pigs for new capital-punishment injection drugs.”

Sen. Graham’s eyes reportedly lit up. “Reckon that’ll get the headlines! Then I’ll respond by saying that GOP gays should be exempt and declared honorary hetero…hetero…what is the word again?

“Anyway, I’ll say that only druggie gays, codeword for Blacks and the poor, should be used, because under an originalist reading of the Constitution they are only three-fifths human anyway.

“I’ll get [now deceased] Justice Scalia and whatshisname Thomaa to support me. If that doesn’t cause an uproar, I don’t know what will.”

Asked about his own outrageous out-Trumping Trump plans, Sen. Ted Cruz said that he would be advocating Female Genital Mutilation among Christian girls, especially the Duggar sisters.

“That’ll teach the little sluts,” Cruz smirked, adding that he thought FGM was a really good idea anyway. “Keeps them from itching that scratch,” he crudely laughed.

Sen. Cruz went on: “I mean, if you can snip off a foreskin routinely, simple fairness and equality say the same courtesy should be extended to baby girls. I’ll appeal to the feminists, that should get me quite a few column inches, however they react.”

As the only female GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina said that actually she was best placed to hit the headlines “because I can use all kinds of sexual remarks in ambiguous ways.”

For example, repeatedly playing “the Lewinsky card,” she said, could even propel me to the vice-presidency, or even a job at Fox.”

In Florida, Marco Rubio took a break from ignoring his job in the Senate and said that he didn’t need to say outrageous things to command the headlines.

“When you’re a Koch employee,” he said, not looking up as he depositing a check via cell-phone app, “you leave that kind of thing to the Masters.”